RUSHVILLE, Mo. — Nine months after flooding breached levees up and down the Missouri River, the repair work has begun. The Sugar Lake Levee near Rushville, Missouri is one of the first to be complete.
It was one of 11 levees to suffer a critical failure last year. Forty-two other levees had minor breaches or erosion issues. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave FOX 4 a tour of the recently completed Sugar Lake Levee on Monday. Contractors ended up building a new levee further away from Sugar Creek instead of repairing the levee where it failed. Building the levee further away from the waterway meant taking 12 acres of farmland out of circulation.
The Army Corps says the new levee will have the same strength as the old levee but the old levee was only built for a ten-year flood event. Statistically speaking that means the newly completed $1.3 million levee is likely to fail in the next ten years.
“You have to look at it from a long-term standpoint, are the farmers able to produce crops enough to make it worth their while,” said Army Corp Deputy District Engineer Steve Iverson.
Lenny Frakes offered a farmer’s point of view.
“You play the cards you’re dealt and these are the cards we have here and this levee has adequately protected us in many years,” Frakes said.
Frakes says last year was the first time local levees had failed since the record-breaking year of 1993. Both Frakes and the Army Corps of Engineers admit it be nice to have bigger levees that last longer but both say the cost is prohibitive.
The Army Corp says Congress gave it $45 million in December 2012 to fix 53 levees. The goal is to have all the work done on the 11 most critical levees by May. Work on the remaining 42 levees is expected to be complete later this summer.
